Worst Day Ever
Puck was rolled up in my fuzzy blue birthday blanket on my bed after breakfast, fully dressed for school.
“What’s wrong, bud?”
“Oh nothin’. I just want to be teleported somewhere.”
“Where’s that?”
“Zootopia.”
I found the next best destination for him: school.
Much later in the morning as I was reading to Yali during lunch, I eventually looked up from the book to see why things were so quiet on his end. He had speared a wad of Easter Playdough from Grandma with his fork and was snacking on it. Takes after his Aunt Rose.
About 3:30 I found myself in the after-school play-zone outside with my boys and handfuls of kids waiting parental pick-up. One of the young men in my charge that afternoon, Bob, decided to play basketball with some of the other boys. I kept one eye on him and the other one on my boys playing in the dirt with Heidi. During one of those few moments I looked away, Bob started bleeding all over the pavement.
“What happened?” I asked, hurrying over, as the P.E. teacher made him hold his nose while she ran off to get some First Aid.
Basketball to the face; hard. I tried not to notice the large puddles of alarmingly bright maraschino cherry red blood spilling all over his hands, clothes, and the ground. He was obviously going to be fine. But with my history of tunnel vision and blood, I wasn’t so sure about myself yet.
“Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about…” I kept thinking in my head as I made Bob sit down for a minute.
Maybe it’s just my own blood that brings it out in me. Still, I was beginning to feel that telltale sour feeling in my stomach after I brought a mess of wet paper towels to Bob in the school office where – mercifully – his grandma had taken over. And back outside to fresh air. Turns out, I made it, and felt a little victorious in the process.
As we drove home, Puck was feeling the frustration of homework in the car, lamenting the fact that he wouldn’t finish all of his math assignment before we pulled up the driveway. So when the lead on his pencil snapped, he flipped his lid.
“MOM! My PENCIL BROKE! My EYEBROWS HURT! And I got in trouble at P.E.! It’s been the WORST DAY EVER!”
All it took was a little pork steak and green beans to change his mind. “Worst day ever” was forgotten.